


if they stop needing you, i'll still need you, my dear

by boxerzayn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: 5 Times, Fluff and Angst, M/M, oui oui tres bien j'aime angst, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 10:44:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxerzayn/pseuds/boxerzayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>harry is good and beautiful and louis is far too much in his own head</p>
            </blockquote>





	if they stop needing you, i'll still need you, my dear

**Author's Note:**

> title from the drums' down by the water. wrote this really quickly and intimately so this is probably more about me than h/l really oh well

❝ Remember how it was when we kissed? Armfuls and armfuls of light thrown right at us. A rope dropping down from the sky. How can the word love and the word life even fit in the mouth?❞ I. the first time harry and louis meet, is a few clumsy minutes of colour, a splash of aquarelle into the blank. it’s at the modern museum of art in london. the clock is four and it’s january. harrys bony knees pointing out through his jeans are rattling down the stairs alone, and that’s what louis first sees of him. bony, fair knees wobbling down the marmor steps. long legs. even longer torso. long hair. long gaze. harry is lean and slow, lazy in a honey-tasting way. louis smiles and nodds, and there's small yellow and pink fireworks going off behind his eyes like poetry. this is it this is it this is it, his body is thinking, and louis has everything in him to think that this is not the way you fall in love. but he isn’t falling in love -- he’s flying, drifting, the air around him is soaking him with poison, and it’s never like you decide anything. “hi,” harry says, big mouth obscenely red. louis stumbles around between the artpieces on his own, strutting around pretending to look at the paintings that are too abstract for his attention span, wishing down to the floor where he knows the boy went. the image of him, the long tree boy that got away from him, is burnt into louis' mind, probably scarred onto him since the tiny explosions in him when they met eyes. a blast of refulgence and then everything is changed, he thinks, small feet mindlessly wandering to the staircase down to the floor under him. II. the first time harry and louis kiss is soft and melted sweet, raspberry red. they fit like two flowers who’ve been brought up together but grown towards different suns, suddenly turning around and meeting their fleshed petals. it’s in hyde park and it’s februrary, the clock a quarter to five. the sun is setting behind the freezing trees and the weak snow is melting around them. the bench is wet but the sky is absolutely beautiful, louis’ favourite, looking like made out of thick brushstrokes of yellow and pink and orange. it is light lilac where the thin, vaily clouds lay spread out like virgins. the dark blue, sticky, bubbly, almost puttering clouds are made of thick acrylic, a tidy contrast to the light and delightful sky. “you look a little tired,” louis says, looking from the sky to harry, slouched on the bench next to him. their knees are touching and on the ground louis likes to think there are tiny ants in the sloppy dead grass beneath them, working on bringing all of the warmth and light from louis’ feet across the small space between them, to harry and his frozen toes. harry has blue streaks of tired drawn under his eyes but they tingle and tangle like a christmas tree when he smiles. “i’m good.” “good,” louis says. he’s thinking about a lot of things. they come to him in waves, the thoughts, sometimes drowning him. he’s thinking about brokeback mountain, his favourite film, with the two cowboys who love each other so few-worded and bravely. he’s thinking about all of his life, all of the things he has, his warm feet, his tangly hair. he wants harry to have it, this fragment of passion he is. harry’s eyes are droopy and happy, faintly green and youngly doe. harry is eighteen and just about to be kissed by a boy. III. the first time harry and louis have sex is all trying to find the socket in the dark. things like these don’t go easy, it’s a bumpy ride on an african dirt road with sand under your feet and laughter in your throat all mixed up with fear. they’re sitting on top of a roof, looking out over londons lights glowing fondly below them. louis keeps finding himself being so little in this big city. he thinks maybe he’d be better off in a smaller town, one where you have time to breath and time to be seen. harry’s breath is dancing slowly on his neck, april evening chilly but the warm wind coming from the boy with the flower mouth is ticking on him like to remind him of life, of this, of how it’ll soon rain and that they should go back indoors. “let’s have’a cuppa tea, yeah?” louis says, turning his head to meet the puzzle piece of complicatedness next to him. harry nodds, blinking away the night and the golden lights below them, blinking away the look of space and stars and green stone dabbled over his face. then he gets up, turning his bear-jacket-back to the city, looks like a spacecraft traveling through something beautiful. “let’s have sex instead,” harry suggests, bluntly, walking across the copper roof. louis breathes for a moment, in and out, and london is suddenly so quiet and seems to be listening. maybe the rain will come a few moments later now, louis wonders. harry turns around now, and louis is thinking that the sky is dark blue, almost purple at the ends, like magic. then everything happens fast, in the dark, outside, under the lights and over the lights as in some sort of limbo between london and heaven. it is not rushed, the sex, but it’s like a scene a little, up here, they’re performers, and harry is wonderful. colourful. once they’re finished, they sit under the sky again looking out over the gold and the black, car lights looping around under them but their bodies completely still, wrapped up in a dirty old quilt with tea in their hands. louis’ are still shaking a little. harry's smiling, and whispering “i think i do love you.” louis’ heart is beating and he’s thinking about harry’s words and about how vincent can gough once said that the night is often more alive and more richly coloured than the day. he thinks about words, and how the ones he uses aren't his, not really. harry’s words aren't harry’s either. their bodies, what they shared earlier, is that theirs? is it londons lights’? IV. the first time louis meets harry’s parents is terrifying and warm, like harry. it's july and cheshire is treating them lovely. it's eleven a.m and there are a few white clouds on the sky. harry's knees are sticking out through his black pants like they did that first time they saw eachother. he has beautiful legs, louis is thinking, like a tree shooting roots throught the ground. then anne opens the door. she has white teeth and frissy brown hair. "come in, come in louis," she says, accent the older and smaller verision of harry's, and louis' stomach re-arages it's furniture. "hello." they have lunch and talk about things widely and openly, louis is charming and yellow and green in the way he speaks, organical. they all smile around their pasta as the clouds slow dance outside the window. after the food louis and harry go for a walk around holmes chapel. they hold hands, ropes tying their bodies together like boats in a pire. "this is where i kissed a girl the first time," harry says, smiling and leaning against a tree. louis kisses him against it, pressing their groins together. forget her, forget her, replace her, he thinks over and over again, as if harry can hear him and erase parts of him just like that. later, they sit on a stone by the river watching it flow by just as easy as before they were there. "what did your mother think of me?" louis says quietly, waving with his hand between the two of them. as if when he says me he means us. "she liked you, off course." harry says, and it's kind even though his lips moove fast, like flamenco. "you're so afraid of whatever it is we're heading towards. i love you and you love me, and you have to go around worrying about other things. it's to no use, louis." louis rubs his hand along his face, studies harry and the angel laws of his face. "you're such a beautiful painting," he tells harry, "such a beautiful statue." harry laughs and shakes his head slowly, then they go quiet. the wind blows through the small green grove of trees. it agrees. harry's beautiful, the wind sings silently. he'd look beautiful with a bloody, dripping heart in his hands, give it to him. V. the first time harry and louis break up, it's december. (there will come more times, and it's almost as if louis knows this while it's happening. as if that's why he just won't believe it.) words are coughed up in his throat but seem to be flowing through harry's mouth like if he'd been eating yellow paint like van gough and as if he needs to puke them up and once they come out they're all brown and ugly and not cadmium yellow at all. louis has always seen sunlight flowing through harry's flower mouth, so he tries to kiss it away from harry's mouth, but he ends up choking on the poison and rot there. louis does not listen to harry's mean words, the ones about how this just isn't working. the cure is on on the stereo in the background, so he focuses on that. on the coffee pumping around in his veins. on the ruined kitchen table in their goddamned kitchen that looks like a fucking space hardware dump. "i need you." he whispers as he sinks to the dirty floor. his shirt smells like harry. "we created something to need." harry softens at that, seems to wilt, the rose he is. he runs fingers through his greasy hair and does not answer. there is grease everywhere, and dirt, and paint. he's standing in his underwear and louis can see his knees, the only tree-stock knees louis will ever love, and he feels angry, at harry, for taking down the armor he had so nicely made, silver and copper and gold, for melting it down with the sun flowing from his mouth. for punching below the stomach. "be with me," he says, weak, distant, but sharp. sad, maybe, is the word.


End file.
